The Raj Quartet: A Dramatization of the Raj Experience in India
Prof. Vidya Patil
Assistant Professor of English
GFGC, Humnabad
Karnataka
India
Abstract
Over the centuries, Imperial entanglements of the British have created challenging
situations for the people affected by them. But it has been very productive and fruitful for
literature in English. Even years after the end of the empire, both British writers and nonBritish writers continue to write poignantly and imaginatively about the issues related to the
rise and fall of the British Empire. The Raj has become a part of the British national
consciousness and has sponsored a mass of literary activity. Among these writers, Paul Scott
has managed to carve a special niche for himself with his outstanding work The Raj Quartet.
The novels of Paul Scott look back at the end of empire in The Raj Quartet (1966-75). It is
not simply a series of novels but essentially a thorough examination and evaluation of British
imperialism. Paul Scott believed that he was in fact chronicling the death of the Raj in his
novel and thus discovered his great theme – the twilight and the eclipse of the British Raj in
India. The novel is not only warm and heart-rending but also thought-provoking. Paul Scott
specifically takes up the historical subject of the failure of the British Imperialism in the Raj
Quartet. The Raj Quartet is a dramatization of the whole experience of the Raj.
Key Words: British Imperialism, National consciousness, Examination, Evaluation,
Chronicling, Dramatization.
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“A magnificent portrait … of the heart of the British Empire as it ceased beating”
-
John Lennard.
Over the centuries, Imperial entanglements of the British have created challenging
situations for the people affected by them. But it has been very productive and fruitful for
literature in English. Exemplary works with lasting value have been created both in the
mainstream English literature and in the English writings of the colonial writers. The British
Empire, at every stage, right from the time it began to acquire an overseas empire in the
seventeenth century, through its consolidation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
subsequent dismantling in the twentieth century, has inspired numerous writers. The impact
of the British Empire on creative writing in English language has been substantial and
enduring. Even years after the end of the empire, both British writers and non-British writers
continue to write poignantly and imaginatively about the issues related to the rise and fall
of the British Empire.
British writing about the Empire was expressed in various forms, such as travelogues,
memoirs, journals, histories and novels. The fundamental themes reflected in these writings
are India as a land of abundant resources, the missionary activities in India and the pride of
expansion of the vast empire. But as the Indian resistance to the English presence began
increasing by the end of the nineteenth century, the tone of British writing on India changed
significantly. The optimism and complacency of the earlier writers was replaced with
insecurities. The Englishmen were perplexed and baffled with the traumatic experiences in
the colonies and expressed their dismay and anguish at the unanticipated consequences of the
nation’s imperial entanglements. The tense interactions of the ruling class and the ruled
and the growing dissent against the tyranny of the foreign rule became the predominant
themes. The increasingly turbulent atmosphere in India led to serious deliberations and soulsearching by the British writers. The perplexity and bafflement at the changing scenario is
best reflected in the writings of E.M.Forster, George Orwell, John Masters, J.G.Farrell, and
Paul Scott.
The British Empire is long gone, but not forgotten. Its power and influence linger on, in the
British imagination. But today the perception of the British Raj comes from the works of
Kipling, Forster, Orwell, MM Kaye, Paul Scott, VS Naipaul and Salman Rushdie. The Raj
has become a part of the British national consciousness and has sponsored a mass of
literary activity. Among these writers, Paul Scott has managed to carve a special niche for
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548
himself with his outstanding work The Raj Quartet. The called it "one of the most important
landmarks of post-war fiction." Paul Scott is a novelist whose works deal with the sociopolitical currents and cross-currents of British India. The Raj Quartet is a compelling
masterpiece about the end of British rule in India. It is a fine exploration of colonialism and
what different individuals thought and felt as the old order was breaking down. Paul Scott’s
treatment of the theme is remarkable especially because of the writer’s honesty and he has
done justice to this sensitive theme.
“A major work, a glittering combination of brilliant
craftsmanship, psychological perception and objective reporting.”2
–
The New York Times
The novels of Paul Scott look back at the end of empire in The Raj Quartet (1966-75). It is
not simply a series of novels but essentially a thorough examination and evaluation of
British imperialism. Paul Scott believed that he was in fact chronicling the death of the Raj
in his novel and thus discovered his great theme – the twilight and the eclipse of the British
Raj in India.No set of novels so richly recreates the last days of India under British rule-"two nations locked in an imperial embrace"--as Paul Scott's historical tour de force, The
Raj Quartet. While exploring the manifold consequences of the rape of an Englishwoman,
the books illustrate in profuse detail the final years of the British occupation of India from
the points of view of English, Hindu, and Muslim characters.
“The Raj Quartet novels must be seen, secondarily as historical novels, in the usual sense
because the author’s deepest concernis with individual destinies caught in the collective
destiny of agiven period of violent upheaval.”3Paul Scott took a deep and honest interest in
the people in the Raj and the legacy left behind. The characters of the Raj Quartet live in an
age of historical transition. They are shaped both by the Second World War and the
immediate struggle for Indian independence. “As drawn by their creator, they are true
children of their age.”4Paul Scott set out to display the effects of social forces and their
conflicts on the average person. Scott’s Quartet dramatizes the clash between new and old
ideas in mid twentieth century India, focusing on how India’s struggle for independence
affected average citizens instead of prominent figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal
Nehru.
The eminent historian,George Lukacs links the emergence of the historical
novel with events which lead the world to face the kind of rapid transitions that create an
environment for an historical novel. Similarly, the British Raj’s end caused a breakdown in
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the existing social order for both Indians and Britons. India in the 1940’s was facing
political and military upheavals that were changing the existing social order making India an
ideal setting for a historical novel.
Paul Scott was greatly inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “History” and this is
reflected in his letters, essays, and fiction. "The background of history and the foreground
of fiction are intertwined in an inseparable way for Scott. . . . Each civilian and soldier,
English or Indian, contributes to the history of the Raj. The relationship between each
person's work and life becomes paramount, for in that way, each human being in Scott's
work contributes to that moral drift and Scott's history becomes part of the history it
records.” 5
His novels fulfill our expectations of the historical novel, as they deal with the
legacy of the past, race and class discrimination and conflicting nationalism and ideologies.
Scott’s novels subscribe effectively to the concept of the historical novel as explained in Sir
Walter Scott’s definition, as recorded in his Preface and Introduction to the Waverley
Novels.
“Two cultures in conflict, one dying and the other struggling to be born, cause an
upheaval into which fictional characters are introduced who move among historical
figures and who participate in historical events, re-creating a personal and direct portrait
of the age.”6
Paul Scott’s the Raj Quartet is a four–volume novel sequence which is about the concluding
years of the British Raj in India. Taken as a whole, the Quartet gives us a panoramic view of
India from the Quit –India Movement to the Partition and Independence. “The Raj Quartet is
a series of long, interlinked, closely documented novels that aim to recreate on a grand
scale the political and human clashes between British and Indians during and after the
Second World War.”7The four novels of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet comprise mostly of
imaginary characters in mostly real places against the backdrop of actual historical events.
Each of the novel stands alone, but at the same time, the four novels taken together are
“…..thick with connected people and interwoven events, transpiring in different places –
fictional but realistic places like Pankot and Mirat and really real places likeNew Delhi
and Bombay.”8
The four books which together make the Raj Quartet so impressive, are,
“The Jewel in the Crown” (480 pages), “The Day of the Scorpion” (495 pages), “The
Towers of Silence” (397 pages) and “A Division of the Spoils” (720 pages). Taken together,
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they add up to more than 2000 pages. But they are of such fine quality and have perfectly
inter-locking storylines which spread across the four novels. Paul Scott describes in intricate
detail and thus manages to bring to life, the beauty and magnificence of India.
The quartet is set in India during the British Empire (the Raj) and spans a
time from the early 30’s throughout the war to Independence of India and the Partition in to
Pakistan and India. The narrative consists of a series of events which are told from
different perspectives, both British and Indian. The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott’s epic study of
British India in its final years, has no equal. Tolstoyan in scope and Proustian in detail but
completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the
experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the
growing campaign for Indian independence from Britain.
The Raj Quartet is set in India during the last days of the Raj, the British
ruling class in India. In 1945, the British government voted to grant India independence from
Great Britain; the days of colonialism ended and an uneasy transfer of power began. Scott’s
novels cover a period from 1942 to 1947, and he uses that particularly turbulent and
disturbing era to introduce a large cast of characters and the events that shape much of
modern life – the last gasp of Imperialism, World War II and the dawn of the nuclear age.
“The Raj Quartet is one of the longest, most successfully rendered works of the 19 th
century fiction written in the 20th century.”9
The Raj Quartet encompasses a wide variety of characters from
different backgrounds who are described in scrumptious detail. It also incorporates an
intricate plot that intrigues and entertains us. Paul Scott explores the many facets of the
Indian Empire ruled by only a handful of British civilians and soldiers. The novel is not only
warm and heart-rending but also thought-provoking. As we read the novel, we get
involved in the lives of the various characters and see them reacting and adapting themselves
to the events and history as it unfolds around them. On occasions unsparing in its study of
personal dramas and racial difference, the Raj Quartet is at all times profoundly humane,
not least in the author’s capacity to identify with a huge range of characters. It is also
illuminated by delicate social comedy and wonderful evocations of the Indian scene, all
narrated in luminous prose.
Though the four novels can be read separately, in isolation or out of
chronological order, the narrative scope can be best enjoyed when they are read in an order.
Each successive novel casts a new light on the one that came before. The historical facts are
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explained and revised in the later novels. Characters evolve and change subtly to play
different roles in the ever-changing historical context. Scott displays how big and small
historical events affect the emotions of men and women. TheNew Yorker stated in its
review of the Quartet that “An artful triumph. . . . [The Raj Quartet] goes forward with
considerable power and urgency. . . Besides storytelling, Mr. Scott uses his remarkable
techniques to portray a place and a time, a society and its social arrangements that are now
history.”10
Paul Scott clearly conveys in the Quartet his conviction that the Raj’s end
had to do with the loss of respect for Britain on the part of the Indians. Scott shaped The Raj
Quartet as a tragedy in which ideals shatter, heroes fall and a society is torn apart in bloody
strife. “One cannot read Paul Scott's quartet of novels without being moved; and what is
the sense of studying history if it is not to move one and to widen one's moral sensibilities?
His achievement is on any count a major one.”11
Paul Scott specifically takes up the historical subject of the failure of the British
Imperialism in the Raj Quartet. He describes the turmoil created by the British in preindependence India and how they eventually get caught in it. The novels dramatize the
divorce of England from the Indian subcontinent in the years leading up to the partition of
India and Pakistan in 1947. “Panoramic in scope and microscopic in detail, the books
recreate the events, sights, sounds and smells of British India in the 1940’s. Scott presents
a picture – politically, sociologically and psychologically revealing –of how two nations
came into tragic confrontation, and of how and why British rule ended in failure and a
sense of diminished importance.”12
Scott’s approach is both humanist as well as historical. His depiction of British history and
India is realistic and as authentic as that of reputable historians. He very convincingly
recreates the bewilderment, frustration and failure of the British living in India in the
1940’s.Michael Gorra argued that while "a postcolonial literature, a postcolonial politics,
inevitably rests on and requires a foundation of anticolonialism ... it cannot, at the end of
the [twentieth] century, be limited to that." There should, he maintained, be room for works
which neither "attack nor ... defend" past conflicts, but explore them and trace their effects
into the present. Examining the Raj Quartet from this point of view, he concluded that it is
"the greatest work of fiction that the British produced about their empire"13 (59).
Of those writers who have attempted to distil the last years of the British in India in fictional
form, the most ambitious and the most successful is undoubtedly Paul Scott. In historian Max
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Beloff’s view, Scott revitalizes history by making historical events “more directly intelligible
than these events might be otherwise to us.”14
“The value of the Raj Quartet is that it helps us appreciate the trials and tribulations of the
British Raj’s end and to better understand this complex period in British, Indian and
World history.”15The Raj Quartet is a dramatization of the whole experience of the Raj. He
describes the events, the effect of these events on different characters and persuades us to his
point of view not through rational arguments but by feelings and intuitive insights. “The Raj
Quartet, like any fiction, is a metaphor for an author’s view of life and its history is
subordinated to other components.” 16
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References:
1) Lennard John, Paul Scott: The Raj Quartet & Staying On.
Tirril [England]: Humanities-Ebooks, 2008.
2) New York Times, Reviewof The Raj Quartet
3) Nancy Wilson Ross, “Unsung Singer of Hindustan”, Saturday Review,
24thJune 1972:42(Weinbaum 212)
4) StrongBlake,Parting of ways : The End of the Spirit of Empire in Paul Scott’s The Raj
Quartet(2005), Thesis submitted at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois.
5) Reece, Shelley C. Introduction. My Appointment with the Muse: Essays, 1961-75. By
Paul Scott. London: Heinemann, 1986. 1-10.
6) George Lukacs,The Historical Novel, translated by Hannah Mitchell and Stanley
Mitchell, p.42 (Weinbaum 212)
7) Walker Keith, Contemporary Novelist, Published in Great Britain, 1980, p.1221
8) Brann Eva, Tapestry with Images: Paul Scott’s Raj Novels [ Critical Discussions ]
Philosophy and Literature 23 (1999) : 183, 185
9) New York Times, Review of The Raj Quartet.
10) New York Times, Review of The Raj Quartet.
11) Reece, Shelley C, Introduction. My Appointment with the Muse: Essays, 1961-75. By
Paul Scott. London: Heinemann, 1986. 1-10.
12)Weinbaum, Francine S, Paul Scott: A Critical Study. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press,
1992. (94-95)
13)Gorra, Michael, After Empire: Scott, Naipaul and Rushdie. Chicago: Chicago Univ.
Press, 1997.
14) Max Beloff,"The End of the Raj: Paul Scott's Novels as History"Encounter 272
(May 1976) : 66 (Weinbaum 212)
15)StrongBlake,Parting of ways : The End of the Spirit of Empire in Paul Scott’s The
Raj Quartet(2005), Thesis submitted at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois.
16)Weinbaum, Francine S, Paul Scott: A Critical Study. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press,
1992. (213)
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